On Saturday, Liverpool were the first team to hold league leaders, Leicester City, scoreless for a full 90 minutes. The Reds won 1:0, with Christian Benteke scoring the lone goal for the home side. Benteke came on as a substitute, however, and not the kind of tactical sub managers love to take credit for. No, Benteke came on because starting center forward, Divock Origi, had to be subbed off due to injury. Origi picked up a hamstring injury toward the end of the first half.
Klopp on Origi's injury: "Hamstring is the shit word of the year for me."
— Tony Barrett (@TonyBarrett) December 26, 2015
Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp must be feeling a little frustrated as he’s had to deal with muscular injuries almost every week since arriving in England. Since October, as many as nine of his players have gone down in varying degrees of severity with muscle injuries. Martin Skrtel and Daniel Sturridge are two important players that are currently left watching matches while they nurse lower body injuries.
Daniel Sturridge is one of Liverpool’s best attacking threats, but unfortunately he hasn’t been able to stay healthy for very long. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
It’s hard to know exactly why, in the span of just 2 months, these professional athletes are going down with so many muscle problems. Bad luck is a possibility, and sometimes teams just have terrible luck when it comes to these sorts of things. However, Klopp will surely point to the rigors of the English league as one main reason. Shortly after being appointed, Klopp had strong words for the FA over the use of one of his youth players. Klopp was worried that these young players are being used too much and as a result run a higher risk of injury.
The only problem is that Liverpool aren’t the only side in England dealing with a heavy workload. More importantly, Klopp is no stranger to muscle injuries. His spell at Dortmund was riddled with star players going down to injury. In his last season in Germany, Dortmund had a massive 116 injuries pile up over the course of the season, 38 of those were muscle related injuries.
Got to be something in the hamstring injury plague at BVB under Klopp now following him at LFC. High-tempo, pressing football does that.
— Jonathan Harding (@JonBloggs66) December 26, 2015
Klopp’s biggest problem, might be his most notable attribute. His ability to get his teams to play exciting, high tempo soccer might be a double edged sword. Klopp has certainly seen success in his career, whether it be bringing Mainz up to the Bundesliga or taking Dortmund to the Champions League final. He’s done it all while being turned up to 11. His players seem to buy into his philosophy as well. By all accounts he’s very popular in the dressing room, so much so that he could get his squad to run through walls for him.
It might just be that this is what you get with Klopp, “heavy metal football” with a chance of injury. Liverpool’s issue with this is two fold, however. The first is that the squad isn’t particularly deep. The side tends to struggle in the absence of a few key players. When those key players go down, a lot of the teams spark is missing. Liverpool are still finding life hard without Luis Suarez, and when attackers like Sturridge are in the stands more often than not, it doesn’t help.
Secondly, and this is where Klopp has a point, Liverpool will play a lot of matches this year. Maybe most important to remember, England doesn’t have a winter break like Klopp is accustomed to. While in Germany, Klopp could be resting his team and getting everyone healthy for the next three weeks. In England, they have to play again on Wednesday and they are the most fortunate side of anyone (including opponents Sunderland). 16 of the 20 teams will have to play 48 hours after their previous game on Boxing Day.
It’s impossible to say for certain that Liverpool’s injury problem is because Klopp likes to play at such a high tempo. But it’s not exactly something you can just ignore. Liverpool will most definitely bring in more players in January, and that will help, if for no other reason than to allow him to be more comfortable rotating his squad. Klopp has also said he wants to work closely with his medical team to prevent these kind of injuries.
Injuries can derail a season pretty quickly, Klopp only has to look back a year ago to see that. He’s not going to change his style, Klopp only has one gear as a manager. He’s just going to have to hope his players can cope with the tempo. In any case, Klopp just hast to hope his luck gets better at some point.
